Concentrate, on the small things

January 15 - February 6, 2025 | Holland Project 
Reno, Nevada
con·cen·trate
1. focus one's attention or mental effort on a particular object or activity.
2. gather (people or things) together in numbers or in a mass.
3. a substance made by removing water or other diluting agent; a concentrated form of something, especially food.
​Concentrate is an exploration of resilience, transformation, and the deliberate act of finding possibility and joy within the experience of chronic illness. Each piece reflects the artist’s journey navigating survival, medical trauma, and the creative potential found in reimagining limitations. Through unconventional materials—pill bottle caps, mirrors, medical objects, miniature figures, and vibrant acrylics—the work challenges traditional ideas of value and purpose, offering new perspectives on connection, transformation, and the containers we inhabit.

The exhibition includes works like No Big Deal, a series of 60 framed 8x10 acrylic paintings created with pill bottle caps as paint brushes, symbolizing the artist’s 60 chemotherapy infusions over a decade of treatment. This deeply personal series layers textured orange and blue forms with miniature train figures, evoking themes of survival, connection, and transformation. Each piece reflects on the precarious balance between life and death, with the act of painting becoming a meditative process of endurance and self-reclamation.

60 Degrees of Remission is an interactive art piece that transforms survival into a communal act of discovery and reflection. It consists of 60 individually signed and numbered 5x7 cards, each stamped with a single orange dot using the cap of a pill bottle as a paintbrush. Mounted on a large metal sheet framed with an old-fashioned wooden frame, the cards conceal the word “remission,” handwritten in robin’s egg blue on the metal. Visitors are invited to take a card with them, symbolically “diluting” the illness and reducing its lingering power. As the cards are removed, the hidden word is gradually revealed, turning an individual journey into a collective moment of revelation.

Other highlights include Planks-a-Lot Mini-Me, which reimagines agency and perspective through a 1:84 scale miniature version of the artist exploring unexpected spaces, and The Container is the Medicine, a work born from the realization that a trash can full of used pill bottles mirrors the pill bottles themselves: both are containers fulfilling their purpose to hold. This piece challenges viewers to reconsider the boundaries between trash and value, illness and wellness, and life and death, asking whether what we discard might hold the key to transformation.

Anchored in a Queer, Chicano art ethos, Concentrate resists assumptions about what it means to be whole or complete. By reframing trauma, survival, and illness as opportunities for reimagining and connection, the work invites viewers to see beyond conventional limits toward a world full of joy, wonder, and infinite possibility.
​The Container is the Medicine
24x20 inches, trash cans disguised as pill bottles, NFS

This piece reimagines a trash can as a giant pill bottle, challenging assumptions about value and purpose. Inspired by the artist’s act of filling a trash can with used pill bottles over two years, the work highlights the shared role of these objects as containers: vessels that hold, transform, and fulfill a purpose.

The piece asks viewers to reconsider what is discarded and what is deemed valuable. Just as a pill bottle isn’t inherently trash, perhaps illness isn’t inherently bad. Could the very things we reject—whether a pill bottle, a trash can, or an illness—contain the potential for transformation?
The Container is the Medicine reframes what we often dismiss as empty or spent, urging us to see containers—whether objects, bodies, or experiences—as integral and full of possibility.
60 Degrees of Remission
25x58 inches, mixed media, NFS

This interactive piece consists of 60 individually signed and numbered 5x7 cards, each stamped with a single orange dot using the cap of a pill bottle as a paintbrush. Temporarily mounted on a large framed chalkboard, the cards conceal the word “remission,” handwritten in robin’s egg blue and marigold orange.

Visitors are invited to remove and take a card with them, symbolically “diluting” the illness and reducing its lingering power. With each card removed, the hidden word gradually comes into view, revealing its meaning through collective participation.

60 Degrees of Remission transforms a personal journey of survival into a shared act of community healing through discovery, reframing the relationship between illness, healing, and connection.
No Big Deal
60 paintings, 8x10 inches, acrylic on canvas

This series of 60 acrylic paintings, created using pill bottle caps as paintbrushes, reflects the artist’s decade-long journey through 60 chemotherapy infusions. Each painting symbolizes one treatment, embodying themes of survival, chronic illness, and resilience.

Using only orange and blue—the colors of death and life, respectively—the artist allowed the pill bottles to “paint” their story, creating raw and textured impressions that explore the relationship between the body, illness, and the medical-industrial complex. The works are complemented by 1:84 scale model figures—miniatures representing human gestures and actions—interacting with the paintings to evoke connections to survival, care, and transformation.

The use of orange circles draws from the artist’s childhood memories of their father’s Union 76 gas stations, where the orange-and-blue logo shaped their early visual language. Created during the artist’s first year of remission, free from steroids and chemotherapy for the first time in over 12 years, the project became a meditative process of confronting life’s precarious balance and reimagining survival through art.

No Big Deal invites viewers to witness an intimate journey of endurance, transformation, and the power of reinterpreting one’s story.
The Origin of #PlanksALot Planking
Planking began for me in the early 2000s when I was a high school history teacher at Los Angeles Senior High School, part of the Los Angeles Unified School District. It was a time of heightened tension as schools grappled with the growing threat of campus violence in the wake of Columbine. We trained for “Code Red” lockdowns, staying confined to classrooms for hours. To prepare for these extended lockdowns, each teacher was issued an emergency bucket equipped with trash bags and toilet paper—a makeshift toilet that symbolized the harsh realities of a world where lockdowns were becoming the norm. The bucket, stored in the back of the room, became a marker of our collective fears and planted the seed for my desire to subvert this heaviness with something unexpected and joyful.

One day, during a lockdown, my students and I were restless. To shift the energy, I proposed a game: I’d turn my back while a student hid, and I’d figure out who was missing and where they were. When I turned around, I couldn’t find Oscar, the shortest student in class. I searched under desks and behind chairs, but he was nowhere to be found—until I looked up. There he was, wedged between the top of a cabinet and the ceiling, stiff as a board.

“What are you doing up there?” I asked, holding back laughter.
“He’s planking!” the class shouted.

They explained it as a playful act of lying stiff like a plank of wood, particularly in places you’re not supposed to be. Intrigued by its mix of rebellion and creativity, I climbed onto a desk and tried it myself. It felt liberating—an activity not bound by my physical limitations. I wasn’t fast or agile, but I could lie down in defiance of norms, turning the mundane into something magical. When I asked how Oscar got on top of the cabinet, a student grinned and said, “We used the bucket!”
Years later, in 2012, as my wife, Emily, and I prepared to leave Los Angeles for Reno, Nevada, I was consumed by anxiety about the transition. At a Diana Ross concert at the Hollywood Bowl, I planked on the steps of the venue, reclaiming a sense of control amidst the uncertainty. It was a small but transformative act—a way to concentrate on joy while facing the unknown.

Soon after, my life took another turn. Diagnosed with a brain tumor, I endured 60 chemotherapy infusions over ten years. Planking evolved from a playful act into a survival strategy. After each major round of treatment, I would plank in a remarkable location to reclaim a sense of agency and distract myself from the pain. These moments became acts of defiance and joy, helping me push the boundaries of what my body could do while still loving it and keeping it safe. It’s a delicate high-wire act of sorts.

In 2020, as I neared remission, my physical abilities continued to decline. I needed new ways to plank and to reimagine what was possible. Then, in 2023, during a bucket list trip to Tokyo, I visited the Small World Museum, where my likeness was miniaturized into a 1:84 scale model in a planking pose. This small version of me opened up infinite possibilities—planking in places I could never reach, from a solar eclipse to a urinal, a dog, and even the sky. These moments celebrated collaboration and reminded me that asking for help isn’t a weakness—it’s a strength. Together, we can achieve far more than any of us could alone.

Planking is my art, my joy, my medicine. It’s how I resist despair and live deliberately, turning the act of being in my body into a magic trick—concentrating on joy to make pain disappear. It’s a reminder that we can do more than just take up space—we can transform it.
​Planks A Lot: Mini Me
26 photographs, 11x14 to 8x8 inches

This series features a 1:84 scale “Mini Me” version of the artist, photographed in a planking pose—a playful participatory meme where one lies flat in unexpected or unconventional locations. Through these images, the artist reimagines their relationship with their body and the world, asking: What would it look like to expand access to spaces and opportunities otherwise inaccessible due to chronic illness and physical disabilities?

By making literal how they often feel “small” or “insignificant,” the artist unexpectedly enlarges the world, discovering previously unimaginable possibilities. The miniature figure becomes a vessel for celebration and discovery, depicted in beautiful and unexpected locations. This shift in perspective reflects how perceived limitations can transform into assets when we challenge what we choose to notice or concentrate on as we navigate the world.

Planks A Lot: Mini Me showcases the transformative power of concentrating on small, playful acts that open up new ways of engaging with the world, turning mundane moments into something potentially magical.
​On the Small Things
43x43 inches, photo print, $500

This mosaic image depicts the artist biting down on a miniature 1:84 scale version of themselves. The mosaic is constructed from hundreds of photos of the artist planking—both at full size and as their 1:84 miniature.

The work invites viewers to bear witness to all aspects of life: the silly and the serious, the despair and the repair, the living and the dying, the yesterdays and the tomorrows. By centering on the “small things,” the piece emphasizes the power of individual moments to expand collective narratives, urging us to consider how each piece contributes to a larger, transformative whole.

“Concentrate: On the Small Things” is a reminder of how the smallest details can hold infinite possibilities.